The City of Joondalup is opening a new co-working space and providing fresh investment funds for start-ups.
The City of Joondalup is opening a new co-working space and providing fresh investment funds for start-ups.
THE City of Joondalup has bought-in to the culture of innovation with the release of a new strategy paper to attract start-up businesses to the area.
Launched on July 2, ‘Expanding Horizons’ presents the city’s long-term vision to create 2,000 new companies and 20,000 new jobs.
As part of the strategy, a new co-working space will be launched next month, located within the West Coast Institute of Training and managed by Business Foundations, and funds are being made available from this year’s council budget to fund local start-ups.
At the strategy launch, Joondalup Mayor and Business News 40 under 40 winner, Troy Pickard, said the city was seeking applications from local businesses for innovative or digital-based activities that would help promote economic development within the city and support the aims of its ‘Digital City’ strategy, launched last year.
The council has created an initial $100,000 innovation fund, with businesses granted sums between $5,000 and $20,000 in this financial year. A seven-member committee made up of industry and academic experts will assess which businesses are awarded the money.
While between five and 20 businesses will be able to take advantage of these funds this financial year, it nevertheless some opportunity in a sector currently starved of funding.
It is also a sign another local government is getting behind the start-up/innovation sector, and declaring its importance for economic development.
The City of Perth was instrumental in developing Perth’s first co-working space, Spacecubed, in 2012, which has been so successful a second one opened a year later. Others, such as Synch Labs in Leederville and the newly opened Atomic Sky Tech Hub in Northbridge, have followed suit.
As a City of Joondalup source told Business News, while the surroundings of Joondalup may not have the space to entice large manufacturing businesses, the city had a better chance in encouraging digital businesses, which required less land.
Mr Pickard’s announcement adds to Joondalup’s developing reputation as an innovation hub. Nearby Edith Cowan University set up ‘Enterprise Tuesdays’ earlier this year, a monthly meeting aimed at start-up entrepreneurs. It attracted speakers from across the metropolitan region, including academics from as far afield as the UK and the US.
In last month’s Joondalup Business Association Awards, local mobile and social web agency BlondGorilla won the online business of the year. Located in Joondalup, the agency wins an increasing amount of its work from the US.
“We’ve been operating in Joondalup for over three years now, starting out as we did from the ECU Business Innovation Centre as a one-man band,” BlondGorilla director Ryan Malone said.
“We now have nine staff and are located next to new co-working space.
“Support from the City of Joondalup and ECU has been awesome. Half our work is now from overseas, with our work in the US looking to grow massively this year. Being located in Joondalup has certainly not hampered our development … quite the opposite.”
ECU and BlondGorilla recently collaborated to create an iPad app calledRiskSpotter, which uses ‘gamification’ as a way of engaging with mining industry staff over health and safety issues. Gamification is a technique to make mundane tasks more fun by introducing gaming elements.
It is these types of collaborations that are required if Joondalup is going to be become a truly digital city, as Mr Pickard wants.
Many start-up centres around the world have been built with a blend of government assistance and university research to create a vibrant innovator ecosystem. Funds are then required from the private sector if the whole sector is to take off. Time will tell if Joondalup can truly become a digital city, but it does look like some of the elements are falling into place.
More details on the ‘Expanding Horizons’ strategy can be viewed at the city’s website joondalup.wa.gov.au
• Charlie Gunningham is an internet entrepreneur and chief operating officer of Business News.
